On the last day of May, every song ever downloaded through the free, university-sponsored music service, Ctrax, ceased to play when the company that offered the program discontinued it.
Almost immediately, Ohio University began looking for an alternative so students wouldn't have to pay for their music, or download it. And although the university is close to signing a contract with a company that provides free music to college students, it ' like its predecessor ' isn't compatible with iPods and other Apple, Inc., products.
Virginia-based Ruckus, which had previously been turned down by the university in favor of Ctrax, is in the final stages of partnering with OU to provide free music to students, said Sean O'Malley, spokesman for Information Technology. Ruckus was the only company to respond to the university's request for a new service to provide free music.
At freshman orientation, O'Malley said, he has been telling students the service will be available when they arrive in the fall.
File sharing created major headaches for OU this winter, when the recording industry began threatening to sue university students across the country, including 100 in Athens.
The partnership with Ruckus wont cost the university anything, but the university can't partner with another Windows-compatible music download service during the contract's one-year length.
Although anyone with a university email address can use Ruckus ' and some OU students already are ' a partnership with the university will mean faster download speeds on the campus network as Ruckus moves servers on-campus to provide its most popular files, said Chris Lawson, Ruckus director of corporate development.
It's a direct connect
instead of going over the Internet he added.
Like Ctrax, the music is free, but there are restrictions on what can be done with it. Users can't buy the music files, which contain digital rights management software. If the songs aren't played with the Ruckus media player at least once a month ' which renews their monthly licenses ' the files won't play at all until they are. Ruckus can also decide to discontinue the service at any time.
Lawson said he doesn't forsee that happening, noting Ruckus, unlike Ctrax's parent company Cdigix, focuses solely on its music business. Cdigix now focuses on selling digital media services to colleges and universities.
More than 130 universities have partnered with Ruckus and students from more than 900 use it, he said, though he could not give exact numbers.
Apple Inc.'s iPods and every other portable music player that doesn't use Microsoft's Plays for Sure technology, including the Microsoft's own Zune MP3 player are incompatible with Ruckus files. Ctrax songs had similar restrictions, O'Malley said, adding that this slowed the program's adoption on campus.
Ruckus also offers video content and is working on partnerships with movie studios to make available what Lawson described as films like you'd see on HBO.
17
Archives
Dave Hendricks
